Batman General Discussion

Well, remember those wings in the New 52.

Edited by Blueace on Sep 11th 2019 at 12:08:03 PM

Wake me up at your own risk.

well as of his year of the villain one-shot eddie quit being the riddler. luthor gave him the most metal gift of all and he realized he was wasting his life with his gimmick

The next Batman writer was to be announced tomorrow as part of Batman Day, but it's now been leaked that James Tynion will be taking over

-Tynion officially confirmed

-Dick will be Nightwing again in 2020

-King teases Helena Wayne

-Using Phantasm in Batman/Catwoman was Clay Mann's idea

They're really going all in with the Bat/Cat ship now huh?

I mean, King is writing an entire Batman/Catwoman mini-series, so...yeah.

As for Dick becoming Dick again, finally. I think everyone knew that "Ric Grayson" was stupid except for the executives at DC. And amnesia is just an over-cliche plot, especially when their reason for not telling him stuff is also stupid.

A deleted tweet by Scott Snyder implies we'll be getting a Court of Owls game by Warner Montreal.

Very random question. So, I know there's this been things in various media about the Batman identity coming from some combination of something Bruce's parents took him to see the night they were killed and/or him seeing/being afraid of a bat and wanting to share that fear with others. This is the pannel I'm thinking of◊.

With that in mind, I wondered if there was like an alternate version of Bruce that decided to dress up as a clown after seeing Pagliacci, going to the circus or something like that.

If not, there should be.

I cam imagine in my head him saying something about how clowns are appropriate because they can both comfort children and strike terror into the hearts of people.

Edited by Hodor2 on Sep 23rd 2019 at 9:38:42 AM

Actually, there might be. In Multiversity, Grant Morrison explored the theme that Bruce Wayne was going to become some superhero that night, it just happened that a bat flew in his window. Instead of a bat, he could have seen an owl or a suit of armor or a stingray. Morrison took all those ideas from an old issue of Batman that showed alternate versions of Batman, including one where he looked up to the night sky and saw a shooting star and so became "the Shooting Star."

All of which leads to the obvious question: what if Bruce Wayne looked out the window and saw nothing? What if he only saw, say, an open window? Yes, he's a real character and he's awesome.

Edited by alliterator on Sep 23rd 2019 at 8:45:53 AM

I recently read Batman Kings of Fear, and i must say it's a great Scarecrow story. I thought it was an old story, but NOPE, it's quite recent, and the art style was just meant to mimic 90s Batman. Quite a tale, it's Scarecrow at his best, he's not a generic psychopath who talks about killing people, like recent writers have reduced Batman's rogue's gallery into, but he's a psychologist at heart, who plays up his mind screw potential, and his analytical skills. I just love the part where he takes a hostage to force Batman to... allow him to tag along on his crime fighting patrols. Scarecrow's reactions to Batman being well Batman are hilarious and quite telling. I won't spoil much, but it takes the it's a wonderful life trope, and does something quite interesting with it, not on someone's existence, but their choices in life.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Sep 24th 2019 at 12:32:22 PM

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

Tynion shares his plans for Batman over Twitter

Edited by Zarius on Sep 28th 2019 at 12:08:04 PM

man the joker year of the villain one shot was weird. it was written by john carpenter and anthony burch and it had an actually funny joker for once.

The Joker is, well, a Joker. Sure, he does a lot of horrible things because he thinks it's funny, but that doesn't mean he can't actually be funny. I like it when he's written as in some perverse way he wants other people to laugh with him, rather than laugh by himself.

"The Joker is Sane"

Is just the perfect statement

Now if only future writers remember it. And the same goes for the majority of Batman's villains too.

Edited by windleopard on Oct 10th 2019 at 11:47:19 AM

Saying the Joker, or a lot of other Batman villain were doing terrible things because they're insane, is some serious Unfortunate Implications on the writers' part

They're "insane" in the sense that they're supposed to be more complex than "I'm a villain because I'm a dick."

I hate it when writers try to ascribe actual mental illness to characters who are beyond fantastical.

They are just “ahead of the curve”.

They are artists, in this for the pageantry & theatricality of the whole affair.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Speaking of the "Batman's villians, particularly the Joker, aren't actually insane" line of thinking, has anyone read the first issue of Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity? Pre-release marketing suggested to me that it was going to take that route, but I haven't had a chance to read it as of yet.

But yeah, I also don't think any of Batman's villians tend to reflect real-world mental illness or disorders because they're rooted in cartoonish exaggeration (even if it's in the service of "mature storytelling" like the Joker's massive body count). The closest version to be accurately mentally ill was apparently Jack (the Joker) in Telltale's Batman, but I haven't actually played that to see if that's accurate.

I think you could argue that Two Face and Ventriloquist are genuinely mentally ill. Same for a few others.

But I wish that the comics would make an attempt to be better about mental health.

That'd require them to know anything about mantal health, though.

Wake me up at your own risk.

You know, I was going through the Wayne/Kane family tree and, man, it's still pretty complicated. There are five Kane siblings, one of which we don't even know:

• Nathan Kane: married Katherine Webb who became Batwoman and later the Headmistress of Spyral
• Philip Kane: helped raise Bruce after the death of his parents
• Martha Kane: married Thomas Wayne and had one son, Bruce, who became Batman
• Jacob Kane: married Gabi and had two daughters, Kate and Beth, who became Batwoman and Alice
• Unnamed Kane: had one daughter, Mary Elizabeth “Bette” Kane, who became Flamebird/Hawkfire

So technically Bruce's aunt and his cousin were both named Katherine Kane and both were Batwoman.

Meanwhile, all Thomas Wayne had was an older sister named Agatha.

Edited by alliterator on Oct 11th 2019 at 1:01:24 AM

Bruce probably could barely tell which kids are his, imagine the issue with uncles and cousins, so that might be for the best.

Wake me up at your own risk.

I don't necessarily think this is the best place to ask, but I thought maybe it would be easier to get a response here:

Is the Telltale Batman game worth playing? I can't really tell what the consensus on it is supposed to be. The main reason I'm interested in it is because from what I've read it has some VERY different interpretations of a few characters (The Penguin and Joker mostly) that made me curious to check it out. Unfortunately in the process of discovering that I ran into a few pretty major spoilers, but for the most part I don't really know that much about it. Has anyone here played it all the way through? Is it worth a shot?

I enjoyed it and appreciated the focus on being Bruce Wayne, their take on The Joker and them not being afraid to make big changes.